Ubuntu will be ‘all about mobile’ in 2013

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Ubuntu made several bold statements about mobile in 2012, but by the end of the year we’ve got little more than those statements to go by. According to Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu plans to be “all about mobile” in 2013.

It wasn’t hard to look and see what direction the Ubuntu team was looking to move to when Unity was announced as the default front end for the platform moving forward. Much like Windows 8, the platform was insulating for touch interfaces. Simple interfaces that aren’t touch exclusive, but support the option when it it available. This became more clear when things like Ubuntu for Android was originally announced as a platform that could make your phone a PC in specific situations. Releasing Ubuntu as a whole OS replacement for the Nexus 7 was another big step that, while still in very early development, shows a lot of promise. In his post holiday blog post, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth made it clear that he had no plans to stop moving into the mobile space.

With Unity now firmly planted in Ubuntu, more phones and tablets will be brought into the build plan moving forward. Shuttleworth didn’t mention and specific hardware, but made it clear that everything is on the table. With the current push into laptop tablet hybrid machines and Intel moving into the smartphone arena, Unity powered Ubuntu has a lot of potential here. A big focus for the platform will also be a push to the cloud. In both an Enterprise sense and an individual users’ case, Ubuntu in 2013 will make it easier to live in the cloud for users and developers alike.

Ubuntu is far from alone in this push to bring Linux to the mobile OS arena. In lieu of the apps that we think are so important to the mobile ecosystem today, Ubuntu will be bringing with it the full force of the Open Source ecosystem, plus Steam for Linux. KDE’s PlasmaActive, especially in Kubuntu, will also be offering a touch friendly approach to Ubuntu on smaller screens. As tablets grow in 2013 with higher resolution screens, more powerful quad core processors, and optional keyboards with larger batteries, Ubuntu on these gadgets might be just what the doctor ordered next year.